#and when i say they can all fit all three archetypes at different times to varying degrees..... then what??

[tuesdaygray]

it's the art, tashi, patrick and the king arthur, guinevere, lancelot of it all, i'm afraid

[pynkhues]

I would LOVE to read your analysis of louis as byronic hero as apposed to his reading as gothic heroine. lots of the latter and zero of the former in the fandom.

Sure! Mmm, okay, so –

What are we talking about when we talk about Gothic Heroes?  

When we talk about gothic heroes, we’re really talking about three pretty different character archetypes. All three are vital to the genre, but some are more popular in certain subgenres i.e. your Prometheus Hero may be more common in gothic horror, whereas your Byronic Hero might be more likely to be found in gothic romance. That’s not to say they’re exclusive to those subgenres at all, and there is an argument that these archetypes themselves are gendered (in many ways, I think people confuse Anne being an author of the female gothic with Louis being a gothic heroine, but I’ll get into that later), but this is also not necessarily something that’s exclusive.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself, haha, so the three gothic hero archetypes are:

Milton’s Satan who is the classic gothic hero-villain. You can probably guess from the name, but he was originated in John Milton’s 1667 poem, Paradise Lost. He is God’s favourite angel, but God is forced to cast him out of heaven when he rebels against him. As an archetype, he’s a man pretty much defined by his pride, vanity and self-love, usually fucks his way through whatever book or poem he’s in, has a perverted, incestuous family, and a desire to corrupt other people. He’s also defined as being “too weak to choose what is moral and right, and instead chooses what is pleasurable only to him” and his greatest character flaw, in spite of all The Horrors, is that he’s usually easily misguided or led astray. (I would argue that Lestat fits into this archetype pretty neatly, but that’s a whole other post.)

Prometheus who was established as a gothic archetype by Mary Shelley with Frankenstein in 1818. Your Prometheus Hero is basically represented by the quest for knowledge and the overreach of that quest to bring on unintended consequences. He’s tied, of course, to the Prometheus of Greek myth, so you can get elements of that in this character design too in that he can be devious or a trickster, but the most important part of him is that he is split between his extreme intelligence and his sense of rebellion, and that his sense of rebellion and boundary pushing overtakes his intelligence and basically leads to All The Gothic Horrors.

And the Byronic Hero, who as the name implies, was both created by and inspired by the romantic poet, Lord Byron in his semi-autobiographical poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which was published between 1812-1818. The archetype is kind of an idealized version of himself, and as historian and critic Lord Macaulay wrote, the character is “a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection.” Adding to that, he’s often called ‘the gloomy egoist’ as a protagonist type, hates society, is often self-destructive and lives either exiled or in a self-exile, and is a stalwart of gothic literature, but especially gothic romance. Interestingly too, in his most iconic depictions he’s often a) darkly featured and/or not white (Heathcliff being the most obvious example of this given Emily Bronte clearly writes him as either Black or South Asian), and b) is often used to explore queer identity, with Byron himself having been bisexual.

Okay, but what about the Gothic Heroine?

Gothic heroines are less delineated and have had more of an evolution over time, which makes sense, given women have consistently been the main audience of gothic literature and have frequently been the most influential writers of the genre too. The gothic genre sort of ‘officially’ started with Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto and Isabella is largely regarded as the first gothic heroine and the foundation of the archetype, and the book opens even with one of the key defining traits – an innocent, chaste woman without the protection of a family being pursued and persecuted by a man on the rampage.

The gothic heroine was, for years, defined by her lack of agency. She was innocent, chaste, beautiful, curious, plagued by tragedy and often, ultimately, tragic. Isabella survives in The Castle of Otranto, but she’s one of the lucky ones – Cathy dies in Wuthering Heights, Sybil dies in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Justine and Elizabeth both die in Frankenstein, Mina survives in Dracula, but Lucy doesn’t. There’s an argument frequently posited that the gothic genre was, and is, about dead women and the men who mourn them, and Interview with the Vampire certainly lends itself to that pretty neatly.

Of course, the genre has evolved, and in particular by the late 1800s, there was a notable shift in how the Gothic Heroine was depicted. The house became a place of imprisonment where they were further constrained and disempowered, she was infantilized and pathologized and diagnosed as hysterical, and as Avril Horner puts it in her excellent paper, Women, Power and Conflict: the Gothic heroine and ‘Chocolate-box Gothic’, gothic literature of this era “explores “the constraints enforced [by] a patriarchal society that is becoming increasingly nervous about the demands of the ‘New Woman’.”

This was an era where marriage was increasingly understood in feminist circles to be a civil death where women were further subjugated and became the property of their husbands. This was explored through gothic literature as the domestic space evolved into a symbol of patriarchal control in the Female Gothic.

Female Gothic vs Male Gothic

Because here’s the thing – the female gothic and the male gothic are generally understood to be two different subgenres of gothic literature.

While there are plenty of arguments as to what this entails, the basics is that the male gothic is written by men, and usually features graphic horror, rape and the masculine domination of women and often utilises the invasion of women’s spaces as a symbol of further penetrating their bodies, while the female gothic is written by women, and usually features graphic terror, as opposed to horror, while delving more specifically into gender politics. More than that though, its heroines are usually victimized, virginial and powerless while being pursued by villainous men.

The Female Gothic as a genre is also specifically interested in the passage from girlhood to female maturity, and does view the house as a place of entrapment, but she is usually suddenly “threatened with imprisonment in a castle or a great house under the control of a powerful male figure who gave her no chance to escape.”

That’s not Louis’ arc, that’s Claudia’s arc twice over, first with the house at Rue Royale, then with the Paris Coven, and Lestat and Armand aren’t the only powerful male figures who imprison her.

Claudia as the Gothic Heroine

Claudia in many ways is the absolute embodiment of the classic gothic heroine. Even the moment of their meeting is a product of Louis’ Byronic heroism – his act of implacable revenge against the Alderman Fenwick which prompts the rioting that almost kills her. She’s a victim of Louis’ monstrousness before they’ve even met, and while he saves her, he arguably does something worse in trapping her in the house with both himself and Lestat, holding her in an ever-virginal, ever-chaste eternal girlhood, playing into Lestat’s Milton-Satan by enhancing the perversion of family and ultimately infantilizing her out of his own desire for familial closeness.

Claudia has no family protection before Louis and Lestat – a staple of the gothic heroine – she is completely dependent on them in her actual girlhood, and again in adulthood, never developing the strength to be able to turn a companion, to say nothing about the sly lines here and there that further diminish and pathologise her (Lestat calling her histrionic, Louis making her out to be a burden, etc.). This is all further compounded again with the Coven, and when the tragedy of her life ultimately leads to the tragedy of her death.  

Louis as the Byronic Hero

Not to start with a quote, but here’s one from The Literary Icon of the Byronic Hero and its Reincarnation in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights:

“Generally speaking, the Byronic hero exhibits several particular characteristics. He does not possess heroic virtues in the usual, traditional sense. He is a well-educated, intelligent and sophisticated young man, sometimes a nobleman by birth, who at the same time manifests signs of rebellion against all fundamental values and moral codes of the society. Despite his obvious charm and attractiveness, the Byronic hero often shows a great deal of disrespect for any figure of authority. He was considered "the supreme embodiment [...] standing not only against a dehumanized system of labor but also against traditionally repressive religious, social, and familial institutions" (Moglen, 1976: 28).

The Byronic hero is usually a social outcast, a wanderer, or is in exile of some kind, one imposed upon him by some external forces or self-imposed. He also shows an obvious tendency to be arrogant, cunning, cynical, and unrepentant for his faults. He often indulges himself in self destructive activities that bring him to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself. He is hypersensitive, melancholic, introspective, emotionally conflicted, but at the same time mysterious, charismatic, seductive and sexually attractive.”

Louis as he exists in the show to me is pretty much all of those things, and I think to argue that he’s a gothic heroine not only diminishes Claudia’s arc, but robs Louis of his agency within his own story. Louis chooses Lestat, over and over again, he’s not imprisoned by the monster in the domestic sphere, he is one of the monsters who’s controlling the household, including making decisions of when they bring a child into it and when Lestat gets to live in it – he wanted to be turned, he wanted to live with Lestat in Rue Royale, and while there are certainly arguments to be made about their power dynamic within the household in the NOLA era, importantly Louis actually gained social power through his marriage to Lestat, particularly through The Azaelia, he didn’t lose it in the way that’s vital to the story of the gothic heroine.

Daniel Hart even said it in a recent twitter thread about Long Face, but there is an element of Lestat and Louis’ relationship that is transactional, and to me, for that to exist, they both have to have a degree of control over their circumstances and choices in order to negotiate those transactions. Claudia is the one who can’t, she’s the one who’s treated effectively as property, and she’s the one who lacks control over her circumstances.

While you could perhaps argue the constraints of the apartment in Dubai lend more to the gothic heroine archetype, I’d argue it as furthering the Byronic trope again by being representative both of Louis’ self-destruction and self-imposed exile. As Jacob has said a few times, Louis does seem to have known to a degree that Armand was involved in Claudia’s death on some level, and it’s that guilt and misery that has him allowing Armand his degree of control. The fact that Louis was able to leave Armand as easily and as definitively as he was I think demonstrates that distinction too – after all, to compare that ending to Claudia’s multiple attempts to leave the confines of the patriarchal house, both in Rue Royale and Paris, which were punished at every turn – first by her rape, then by Lestat dragging her back off the train, and then by the Coven orchestrating her murder.

Louis gets to leave because Louis can leave, he has both the social and narrative power to, and the fact that he does is, to me, completely at odds with the gothic heroine. Louis can, and does advocate for himself, Louis is proud, moody, cynical. Defiance is a key part of his character, just as his exile from NOLA society due to his race, and his chosen rejection of vampire society in Paris, is. He’s intelligent and sophisticated, travels the world, and has misery in his heart, guilt that eats him up, and self-destructive tendencies. That’s a Byronic Hero, baby!  

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Annabel Lee Whitlock: The Hypocrite, the Vampire and the Femme Fatale. A review of archetypes

Good news: I'm on vacation. Bad news: I'm on vacation.

And that means rest. A positive externality. But on the other hand, it also means that my brain, which is constantly thirsting for stimulation, has lost eight hours of activity a day that it has to fill with something. You know what happens to orange tabbies who suddenly become quiet and behave as if possessed by all the demons of Ars Goetia? Well, sort of.

So my brain in need of stimulation decided to dust off my college notes and talk about archetypes, because it's a thorough enough job to keep me away from climbing walls or checking random stuff on the Internet for 10 hours a day.

What is an archetype?

Just to make sure we're all on the same page, an archetype (a "type character") is a writing model that describes a role and has certain characteristics.

The term was coined by Honoré de Balzac, a French writer obsessed with what he called "micro-history. His life's work, "La Comédie humaine", is a massive collection of more than 80 novels, which, when read, will give you more information about that historical period than any theoretical book on the subject.

You may not know this sir or the protagonist of "Illusions perdues", but you do know the archetype that Lucien Rumempré represents: a young from the provinces, full of dreams, who moves to the city only to discover that the lights are there to dazzle and distract from the misery.

But at the same time, the characters that come to mind are likely to be very different from the good Lucien. This is because the archetype is a different construct from the cliché.

If I had to explain the difference, I would say that the cliché is a recipe, while the archetype is a mold.

If you follow a recipe, you will always get results that are very similar, even if you make small variations in the recipe. But if you have a star cookie cutter, the contents of the cookies can be quite different: no one would dare say that a chocolate chip cookie tastes the same as an oatmeal cookie or a gingerbread cookie. Even if all three are cut in the shape of a star.

So I'm going to do a little review of the archetypes that Annabel notices. The differences, the similarities, and let's see what comes out.

The Hypocrite

Not "hypocrite" in the sense of a personality, but in the sense of a way of behaving in the world: The Hypocrite is a character whose way of relating to the world is a pantomime, whose role is to build themselves up to fit into a system (which, by the way, they despise). If they don't have what you want, they will at least pretend enough to make you think they do. Usually for personal gain.

The founder of this archetype is Julien Sorel, the protagonist of "Le Rogue et Le Noir", the most famous work of Stendhal, one of the most prominent writers of the literary realism founded by Balzac.

Julien is this poor boy, but smart enough to memorize the Bible, which makes him seem educated enough to get him a job as a tutor in a rich house, and eventually a priest's cassock.

A more modern example is Nick Wilde from Zootopia. This fox has decided that if he alone can be a con man, he will be one, though he desperately wants someone to see him as an individual beyond that. He hates the system that condemns him, but he wants to be a part of it and will play by the rules he is given in order to profit.

Annabel, like Julien and Nick, has built her entire identity around being what is expected of her, in her case a perfect Victorian high society lady. Something that has given her a tremendous amount of knowledge about how people move in such circles. And from her point of view, people are the same everywhere (Miss Marple would be proud of her).

And in this oppressive context that fosters an environment where people kill each other, she knows what currency to give in return for loyalty: people will look for a leader, someone competent, someone who knows what they're doing.

Annabel has no idea what's going on, what awaits them outside the Nevermore gate, or even if there's a way to escape. But she can pretend to know. The quietest person in the room wins, and she's the one who takes the prizes to achieve her goal. The performance is justified as a means to an end.

Another thing that characterizes stories with a Hypocrite as a relevant character is the exploration of the consequences of this lifestyle: identity is consumed by the role, the line between actor and character is lost, and the Hypocrite is often faced with the reality that they have put so much of themselves into the character they are playing that once it is exposed, there is nothing underneath, or at least nothing worth saving.

In Annabel's case, this is expressed in her utter horror at not being trusted by Lenore. She puts her hypocrisy at the disposal of her lover and comforts herself with the reward of her affection, but Lenore's love for her is the only thread that binds her own identity: that Lenore does not trust her means that the role has completely consumed her, the complete confirmation that she, as an individual, is no longer a disturbed poseur.

Related to this point, we have the final transversal line in the conflicts that Hypocrites tend to have: loneliness. When all their relationships are based on a carefully rehearsed performance, the Hypocrite knows that they are alone in the world, that no one really knows them, and they are usually so deep in the role by this point that they don't want to (or can't) leave it. The longing for honest relationships overlaps with their self-destructive tendencies.

As much as Annabel insists that it's her and Lenore against the world, that her life is meaningless without Lenore, and that she is enough, these phrases indicate that Annabel is painfully aware of how she is perceived by others, and though she tells herself that Lenore's love is all she needs, it seems more like a mantra to keep her sane than a reality.

As you may have noticed, the main difference from the usual Hypocrite is that Annabel has Lenore. A bit like Nick has Judy. But Nevermore is a story that takes the psychology of its characters much more seriously, so while Nick just needs someone to reach out to in order to form honest relationships, Annabel passes because she has no fucking idea how to form an honest, healthy bond.

That Annabel is extraordinarily self-destructive, emotionally dependent, and so afraid to step outside the box she knows so well are, in this light, natural consequences of the Hypocrite lifestyle.

The Vampire

Here we must make a leap to another movement: during the Romantic period, the Gothic novel was at its best, and it was Edgar Allan Poe who squeezed out the last drops of what this genre had to offer.

Now, looking at the bibliography, Annabel does not have much in common with the gothic heroine (that is something Lenore takes care of), neither on an aesthetic level nor on a value level. To find her in the works that inspire her, one must look in a slightly different direction: the female vampires of gothic fiction.

Aurelia ("Vampirismus" by E.T.A. Hoffmann), Carmilla ("Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu), Clarimonde ("The death woman in love" by Théophile Gautier), the vampire in the poem "The Metamorphosis of the Vampire" by Baudelaire, the three vampire women, and Lucy ("Dracula" by Bram Stoker).

All these characters have something more in common than their fangs: they are beautiful women capable of making anyone who sees them fall completely into their arms, as opposed to their role of making the one they have chosen as their prey "fall".

The Gothic vampire is practically a succubus, but much less sexualized than one might think. Although many of these works, with the exception of the poem by the good Baudelaire (an author who should be fed separately on these matters), spare no pages in describing how beautiful they are, neither do they overly sexualize them, nor are they particularly flirtatious: even Clarimonde is dedicated to simply being there and letting her presence alone do the work.

This is something Annabel shares with the gothic vampire: though physically gorgeous, the framing in the comic doesn't tend to focus on her as an object of sexual desire, her beauty is highlighted, but in a way that is more akin to an ethereal or unattainable entity.

This is due to a mixture of two things: the Gothic novel is steeped in Catholic puritanism, and even if it is to present a villain who uses her attractiveness as a weapon, the erotic component is subtly exposed, and the vampire's angelic beauty offers a contrast to her status as an antagonist: beautiful on the outside, insidious on the inside.

This is another thing Annabel has in common with the gothic vampire: she is aware that her appearance gives her a haughty, elegant, and dignified air, identifiable enough to earn nicknames like "Queen" or "Queenie," and she knows how to capitalize on it. This contrasts with the darker parts of her personality.

Another thing that terrifies romantics about vampires is that these fangirl succubi possess a quality that makes us 21st-century readers raise an eyebrow because it's supposed to make us uncomfortable: a deep, honest, and sincere willingness to be affectionate.

In context, this makes sense: the vampire is a representation of sin, temptation, and lust. So their affection is something that leads the object of it away from the path of morality (this is the 19th century, this is really important).

I understand that because of the vampire's role in all of this, she is a devoted lover. Incredibly devoted, in fact: Clarimonde is Romuald's sugar mommy (no, I'm not kidding, I'm not exaggerating either), and Carmilla never stops showering Laura with affection and attention, satisfying this girl's craving for companionship after living in isolation.

Annabel does something similar: there is a genuine interest on her part to reach out and connect with Lenore, and in scenes like this, she goes out of her way to show her that she is an amazing person in her own right, rather than being her brother's shadow.

All kidding aside, I think of the archetypes I could find to analyze Annabel, this is the one that fits her best, even though she is not, well, literally a vampire. She seems to have several things in common with Carmilla in particular.

The Femme Fatale

We all have a more or less clear idea of what a femme fatale is: this extremely attractive, sexually active, badass woman who is there to make the male character's life miserable and has a 50% chance of smoking fine cigarettes with a cigarette holder. This is…partially true, but also highly inaccurate.

Although these characters can be traced back much further in mythology, this archetype gets its name and very specific form from Raymond Chandler, the founder of the noir novel. I'm not going to go into too much detail on this topic, as entire books could be written about it, so let's just focus on what's important.

The thing to understand about the context to understand the Femme Fatale is that we are in the 30-40's and although she has many more rights than 19th century women, the decadence shown in these works emphasizes that she is in a macho context where every single rule of the game is stacked against her. This is something that Femme Fatale is acutely aware of: no matter how well she plays the game, she will always lose.

This is something that Annabel shares with this archetype: she is very aware of the rules of the game, she knows backwards and forwards how the world works, so she is also aware that they are too heavily stacked against her to ever win. All she can do is resign herself, play the role as best she can, and find small distractions to cling to like a burning nail so as not to lose her head altogether.

Therefore, the Femme Fatale's approach to life is this: if the rules are stacked against her, that means she has the right to do whatever it takes to survive. These tactics usually include manipulation, deception, exploitation, and, of course, making the most of her sexual attractiveness because, unlike the vampire, she knows how to flirt and use sex as a weapon. What needs to be kept in mind here is that for this character archetype, the use of these wiles comes not because she is factory evil, but as a coping mechanism within a system she cannot win against. If this ultimately makes her a villain, it's more about her role within the story in which it plays out than anything about the archetype itself.

Here's an interesting difference between the Annabel we see in Lenore's memories and the one we see in the present day of the comic: Annabel used to be willing to play by the rules, but the thing she learned from Lenore is that cheating is more than possible. As a result, her attitude has become much closer to that of a Femme Fatale, using her extensive knowledge of the rules to her advantage, going with the flow for personal gain. Her methods are much closer to those of the Hypocrite (especially since we haven't seen Annabel use her body or affection as currency yet), but there are definitely similarities.

Another thing about the Femme Fatale (when she is NOT a villain) is that, like the Vampire, she operates within a duality: an exterior built to be sexy in a somewhat intimidating way (which is why the aesthetics of many of these characters can be interpreted within BDSM culture), but with some goodness in her heart. A really clear example of this is Vivian Sternwood from The Big Sleep (the first novel on the subject published by Raymond Chandler): her own father describes her as "rude, demanding, clever, and quite ruthless," and Marlow, our detective, will have a long series of uncomfortable encounters with her. But by the end of the novel, when he is faced with the same choice Vivian must have made in the past, he cannot help but realize that despite everything, this woman would rather keep painful secrets than harm her family, whom she loves dearly.

So if you're wondering why the framing of scenes like this looks familiar, that's why.

Add to that the three layers of how her aesthetic works: an angelic appearance for when she needs to play dumb, her gaslighting, gatekeeping, girlboss bullshit face for when she needs to demonstrate authority, and framing where it should make you directly uncomfortable.

Looks are one of the strengths of Femmel Fatale's performance. And it's one of the strengths of Annabel's performance.

Conclusions

One interesting thing about looking at Annabel in this light is to realize two things: first, that many of the archetypes her character seems to take notes from are often in the role of antagonists or, for that matter, villains. 

The other is that these archetypes are quite well ordered and connected: the gothic vampire is the inspiration for the Femme Fatale of Noir (her beta version, if you can call it that), and the Hypocrite shares a historical writing period with many female vampires. From her conception, Annabel is constructed in a fairly orderly fashion, and believe me, that's a huge contrast to what's going to happen with Lenore (which I'll get to soon, but I need to brush up on my picaresque novel notes). 

The last thing I want to point out in this review is this: unless you're a Nick Wilde-style Hypocrite, Hypocrites and Vampires in general tend to have utter destruction in store for them. The Noir, for its part, puts us in a situation where the Femme Fatale, even if she wants to change, is generally too deep in this tangle to get out. 

So what I find interesting about Annabel in this regard is:

This is actually THE scene that shows us Annabel timidly stepping out of the scheme of things. She doesn't seem to want to change, in fact I'd bet she's terrified to change, but even though she's repeating her father's toxic pattern here, she's also breaking it without realizing it. 

It's too early to tell if we'll see Annabel have some sort of redemption towards less harmful behavior, or if we'll end up seeing her become a villain altogether. But I'm really curious to see where this story goes with all of these elements.

[nevertheless-moving]

been catching snatches of your stormlight posting. never enough to actually understand anything. should i read it

I really liked it! However it was on my reading list for many years before I finally was in the right headspace to dive in. It's a lot.

The Stormlight Archive consists of four fairly long high fantasy novels and two tie in novellas. It takes place on an alternate fantasy world called Roshar, which is part of a larger fantasy universe called the Cosmere. If you like high fantasy epics, or if you're interested in giving them a shot, then yes, definitely try out the Cosmere!

High fantasy, as I define it — sorry if you know this already anon also sorry if my definition differs from other's reading this — is...bigger than life. High fantasy is two main things. First, the setting— magic creatures and fantastical architecture and folks with super cool magic powers. Second, High Fantasy is the way people behave, which verges into Mythology and Fairy Tale. I'll explain.

Don't get me wrong, when well written, and Cosmere is very well written, the people still feel real. I mean the glowing guys wearing vaguely renaissance faire clothing who are fighting the giant rock monsters still have complex relationships with their fathers. But it's also an idealization — people saying the right words at the right time, people being their noblest version of themselves. Read and/or Watch the Lord of The Rings and take notes on Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate. It's the fantasy of people at their best, noble in all the ways we want the word to mean.

Low fantasy, by contrast, is a bit more grounded, both in the setting and the people. The places in low fantasy look more like your day to day on earth — dive bars with bouncers and crude jokes on bathroom doors. The dive bar bouncer in low fantasy is just a massive rock troll and the graffiti has penises of many different fantasy races. The people are a bit more like some guy you know. It can still be a good some guy you know. Just if they have to fight a nightmare monster they're probably ugly crying and maybe peeing themselves a little. People can still be good and bad, they just maybe have a bit less polish.

There's obviously lots of grey area — Game of Thrones has a lot of high fantasy setting elements, being a vaugely mideval europe pastiche with dragons, but the way it focuses on brothels and people trudging through mud is a bit more low, the reality of a world without indoor plumbing, as opposed to the dream of a world without cellphones. It has epic speeches and larger than life figures, but they get bogged down by stuff like taxes and dehydration, which high fantasy doesn't generally linger on. I'd argue some of the worst behavior fits right in with high fantasy — the red wedding is just a much graphic version than we're used to of the ol' scheming advisor trope, but still fits into the archetypes. Anyway.

Discworld by Terry Pratchett is an excellent low fantasy series, and if you're looking for a fantasy book recommendation and haven't read/watched/ didn't really enjoy lord of the rings, or if you did and want to read my favorite series, then read these 100%. If you've read them already — nice.

(I think having some more familiar touchstones makes fantasy novels more enjoyable for folks who aren't into their recreational reading being Very Unlike real life . Discworld is incredibly funny, while also being full of heart. The turns of phrase are adult without being crazy dense. I'm not a personally big grimdark person; I prefer my stories with a core belief that people who are good deep down, which is at the heart of Pratchett's writing. I laughed, I cried. I recommend Guards, Guards as a first book but you can start lots of places.)

To get back a little closer to your initial question — I started reading the Cosmere with Mistborn, which consists of three novels, a several hundred year time gap, and then four more, slightly shorter but still pretty long novels. It takes place on a completely different world from Stormlight. The planets are only tentatively connected, but there the very solid promise that they will interact a lot more soon.

By soon I mean in the next decade as far as book publishing goes, because the author, Brandon Sanderson, is a madman. And by madman I mean he fucking writes like a machine. I checked his website and he posts things like "23% percent through my next book." "45% through" "82% through" who writes like that??? He's also a massive prude, which is hilarious. I love him in a non parasocial way. He's got the next 20 years of book releases mapped out. Whom the fuck??

Anyway if you like high fantasy epics, or want to try one, then yes, definitely try out the Cosmere! It's funny, I've always had a hard time listening to audiobooks, but either things clicked in my head or the narrators, Michael Kremer and Kate Reading, are just that good.

I...actually liked Mistborn more than Stormlight. The first Stormlight book I found a little hard to get through at the start, because the main characters seriously go through it, but I had trust in the author at that point and things DID get better. Mistborn hooked me start to finish and every plot twist felt perfectly executed in a way that Stormlight didn't completely nail for me. I mean, Stormlight Archive is still a great series, with compelling characters and well structured romances and interesting world building and super, super rad fight scenes.

I'm posting obsessively about Stormlight partially because I'm scrambling for more cosmere content (I didn't actually expect to reach the end) and partially because there are things in the books that weren't 100% satisfying, and those spaces are where fandom lives. Again, it's still really, really good. Just long, and sometimes fairly heavy in how much the main characters struggle with mental illness while fighting crab monsters.

In the stormlight archive, your personal fight with depression and PTSD and drug addiction is actually inextricably linked to your super rad glowing magic power fight with rock monsters and crab people. The crab people who also have a lot of trauma and mental illness.

Honestly, I'm not sure how Sanderson is going to resolve that.

But fuck it, TLDR, Stormlight is good but long, and the next book is supposed to resolve a bunch of stuff and it comes out this December, and the way he wrapped up things in his other books was really satisfying! So this is a pretty good time to get into the series!

[celestialpaperhaze]

Dimentio Analysis

My thoughts on this Dimentio post, recently shared with me by @iukasylvie! The post: https://altermentality.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/flair-for-the-dramatic/.

! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SUPER PAPER MARIO !

Okay before I address the article, I should establish my own Dimentio headcanons. I see our silly jester as a sociopath, in that he can't feel love in the same way as other people. Like Bleck, he has a void inside of him, but Dimentio fills it by feeding off of others. Basically, he likes playing around and taunting people because of how emotionally reactive they are, it's how he fills himself up. Mimi's his favorite to mess around with because she's VERY reactive. As for why he wants his own world: he wants to put on a show. The whole of existence, dedicated to entertaining him. The only characters I can liken this to are the Celestial Toymaker (DW) and the Collector (TOH).

Now first off, the article references SPM in the context of "commedia dell'arte", which was a form of theater in Italy during the Renaissance. This form of theater had three types of characters: innamorati (the star-crossed lovers), vecchi (the powerful elders of society), and zanni (the clowns). The common plot of these plays? Two young lovers, hindered by the elders, who end up turning to the zanni to reach a happy ending.

Of course, Dimentio is a zanni character type. He may not help the Count reach his happy ending directly, but his actions do lead to the wedding with Tippi so, in a sense, this does fit the archetype. And of course, I don't have to tell you who the innamorati characters are. Anyone who knows a lick about Shakespeare probably already knows the love story of Blumiere and Timpani uses a pretty strong "forbidden love" trope, but it's interesting to see this somewhat supported by other forms of theater arts! To say Nintendo and Intelligent Systems had commedia dell'arte in mind when writing SPM's story would be a stretch, but it's always cool to see some elements match across different eras and types of storytelling.

Moving on, does Dimentio care about the other minions? The article eventually concludes that yes, he must, because how could you live in a castle with four other people and not grow to love them? My headcanon lines up with this pretty well--after all, Dimentio words the Count's lie about creating a new world as a "betrayal", and a betrayal facilitates caring enough to trust someone in the first place (points at Olly's entire arc with Olivia in The New Void). But Dimentio doesn't know *how* to love, and his version of "care" is different. He likes having the others around, but as players in his game, as entertainment. That's how he sees it. He fixates on them specifically for a reason he'd never care to explain.

New Void Spoilers Below.

You could say he fixates on Luigi, too, which might seem strange when they had far less time together. Shipping aside, I think canonically Dimentio fixes on Luigi because he's the key to everything, he's a highly valuable asset and Dimentio knows it. In the New Void, this isn't exactly the case. Dimentio doesn't have anything to gain by making Luigi suffer, it's just pure fun. Sure, he COULD torment some Shaydes or D-Men instead, but they're dead and they're boring. Dimentio's also been in the Underwhere for...awhile, and Luigi is a familiar face. In his own way, Dimentio's been a little lonely. It's just that, his way of acting on this feeling is to turn it into a game of psychological warfare...

New Void Spoilers End.

Overall, the strongest part of the article is the description of Dimentio's ideal world. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of darkmarxsoul's Chaos Trilogy, but this depiction of Dimentio's universe might be the best I've ever seen. “Dimentio’s goal is to maximize the amount of drama in the universe…a world with the dials of mortal anguish and despair and even joy set to maximum volume, and the banishment of the mundane. A world where he pulls all the strings to ensure this happens. The Ultimate Show.” Chilling! It's like Bill Cipher's whole Weirdmageddon deal, except rather than maximizing weirdness, DImentio would be maximizing drama, flair, and theatrics. All the world's a stage, and whatnot.

I LOVE this idea for a world of his so much that it's a wonder I haven't started writing fics centered around it already! All these new people living what they think are just ordinary lives, not knowing that it's all being orchestrated by a being that craves mere entertainment. Life as a musical, maybe a comedy tomorrow, or maybe a tragedy next week--all because Dimentio wants it to be. I mean, that's absolutely horrifying when you think about it! Enough for a brief existential crisis maybe! But it's also very cool >:)

In summary: what do we think about Dimentio? I think he's a sociopath who doesn't understand love but desperately wants to be entertained. The article's description of Dimentio's ideal world is scarily accurate and also has a LOT of fanfic potential. Dimentio himself is fun and silly, but also dangerous and probably not someone you'd want to interact with in real life.

As this is my opinion/interpretation, I'm too biased to say whether or not this aligns well with canon. But what do you think? Do you think this all fits Dimentio perfectly, or do you have other thoughts?

[kmclaude]

Ive been listening to Jesus He Knows Me lately (Ghost just released the music video for their cover and its great) and its got me thinking of an AU were Tiefer goes on to become like a superstar priest/televangelist. Puts on an act about how Jesus saved him from his terrible childhood abuse, Jehan is his protege who he treats as his own son after his father died, maybe he's even got a wife he pretends to love (only in front of others) Absolute debauchery and abuse out of the public eye of course

not me like 'he could marry his sister' no but he sure could marry a wife that looks like her (honestly she fits the blonde t r a d wife look)

i am devouring this, brilliant, debauched, lovely

(honestly I was thinking about a question @idalwaves asked or reblogged about if being a different flavor of christian would like...how it would change tiefer or jehan's relationship to their sexuality or something -- like would bein southern baptist or fundie work -- and anyway it had me thinking about basically how catholicism is perfect for someone like tiefer who is gay and loathes women, whereas something like fundie or southern baptist that expects a patriarchical figure with a wife and kid, the family man archetype, would be painful for him. like torture to have to fake a loving marriage to a woman.)

BUT IT WOULD BE DECADENT god cuz he can be charming, put on a southern drawl (his accent is southern but different southern, cajun southern, and massaged away by a more new orleanian accent flattened out), lie and lie and lie -- has a wife he fucked (timed it all right and everything, natural family planning and all) until she got pregnant (thankfully quickly) because that's what she wanted, that's what was expected -- and if he works extra hard and after hours and away from her and the home its for god, it's the right thing, it's what she signed up for, of couuuuurse he loves her, ignore that he won't touch her except for briefly in public or when she needles wanting another child (and if he knocks her up enough and then crushes some pills in her food or drink to get rid of it because three's e-fucking-nough, well, hey, what she doesn't know won't hurt her...)

AND JEHAN WELL......things could be the same: dead exlover friend's son is left without a father and, well....wouldn't be too odd for him to offer to a new widow and new mother to take her eldest (his godson) under his wing, later even let him live with them (because he only has daughters so far and one day he won't be around -- makes sense to have someone ready to take over after he's gone -- jehan would be perfect for that -- in fact, it's not his idea's, it's God's even, God put it in his heart that jehan would take up after him -- so why not let him spend a summer with them...and winter...and spring...)

and you KNOW he is fucking jehan -- maybe he waits a bit longer than canonically, properly has him under his thumb until he's fifteen or sixteen (very much the adolescens that he finds attractive) or maybe it starts right after nathan died (he's not even attracted to a 10 year old's body -- not that canonically he's into a 12 year old's body either but at least puberty is hitting and it reminds him of him and nathan in their youth and he's not coping well -- but it's a heady thing, power, and he's been able to get wealth and opened doors and it's a far cry from being a beaten faggot whore on his sister's leash being whored out so why not, why not, it's not like jehan's upset about it, he always gets to cum, and it's not like his wife knows, it's not like anyone knows, why not? who's gonna stop him? God?)

basically tiefer would be soooooo much worse. not that he's great canonically but add wealth and power without rules?! (Catholicism at least has rules.) C H R I S T.

(honestly if you wanted to get real fucked up -- televangelism would probably make this also a modern or modernish AU -- say 80s or 90s at earliest making Tiefer being born....instead of 1930s, probably 1950s or 60s...and well....the implications of being able to take photo or video....well.....well....)

[rockybloo]

Hi, feel free to ignore this ask, or point me wearily to the FAQ if i missed it, but can I asked what inspired the world of Lore? Specifically the holistic nature of it, where different tales live side by side. I am a…hopeful, one-day fairy and folk tale scholar, and in my studies I’ve seen this concept pop up in a lot of more modern retellings/reimaginings, and one of my projects has been to see if i could find a source. When i say inspiration/source, I don’t mean singular piece(s) of media that gave you the idea (if you have one id love to know it though!) i more mean sorta your own internal source, the emotional trigger that led you to grouping separate fairy tales into one larger world. I know theres a lot to be said for the simple concept of “because it fucks, thats why” (some of my favorite interpretations of tales spawn from similar concepts) but if you have the time or energy, id love it if you’d be willing to ponder deeper motivations.

Sorry for the long ask, im absolutely obsessed with your characters and the worlds you create by taking archetypical settings and twisting them into something new and intriguing. Thank you for sharing your art (in all senses of the word) with us!

Thank you! And I very much love overthinking fairy tales and their existence SO I SHALL DO EXACTLY THAT!

For me, the reason I just plopped down every fairy tale into the same world, aside from a simple "Because everyone else does it and it's my favorite type of fantasy world" is because it makes so much sense to me.

There's a ton of repeated themes and characters in fairy tales to the point they have a classification system to make folklorist's lives easier when categorizing them. There are so many different Cinderellas, and I don't mean just the European one, as it's a fable that has been found all around the world. There are very much big differences in each story but the literal age old tale is still noticeable.

I took a mythology and fairy tale class in high school where we talked about "The Hero's Journey" which is like a template nearly every story falls into regardless of where a story is from. And for me, it was wild seeing just how many shared tropes humanity has as a whole in our storytelling.

A character that pops multiple times, aside from Prince Charming, is the Big Bad Wolf. OF COURSE it's because wolves were (and still are somewhat) dangerous animals and so that is how they are characterized in fables such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs. But it's still noticeable that these stories overlap with each other so fitting them into a single world just makes a lot of sense.

Another gigantic reason is that we all live in reality. There's a general understanding of what can and cannot occur on Earth. We know we can't fly without some machine to aid us or talk to animals and have them speak our language back to us. And many mythical beings can potentially be traced back to specific interactions early humans had with rare instances in nature and a need to have a reason "why?".

In fairy tales, reality is fantastical. Numerous tales have talking animals, super natural beings, shapeshifting, characters defying death and recovering from "should have been" fatal injuries, and being able to live happily ever after with never ending love.

We humans don't really get that. Especially that last part with happy endings and love. Sure, we can live a peaceful life or try to but there's this level of joy in some tales that only exists in fairy tales. And love so so much more complicated than the typical "love at first sight that lasts forever without problems".

With all these elements that land fairy tales in a different realm of reality than us, I thought it made sense to actually make a realm (or rather a planet) that explains why things in the world of fairy tales are so much more different than us and even somewhat explain why our reality doesn't have magic in it.

It basically traces back to that age old human urge to explain the unexplainable with some story.

[inventors-fair]

Three in the Bush: Idiom Winners ~

Congratulations to @helloijustreadyourpost, @reaperfromtheabyss and @yourrightfulking for winning this week's contest!

@helloijustreadyourpost — Goblin Engineering Corps

Let's get my one-and-a-half nitpicks out of the way first: the first ability is missing "to cast" at the end of the sentence; and also, this is envisioning a world where echo is presumably coming back to standard, so keep your fingers crossed, I guess. Neither of these takes away from the fact that this card is one of the best examples of how to use idioms cleverly. I absolutely love the "check this out" hubris on display, emblematic of MTG's traditional goblin mood and at the same time not entirely demeaning—because the card's also pretty great! The more I look at it, the more I feel that it should be a rare in the intended shell, so maybe up this to two-and-a-half nitpicks, but who's counting?

Not these goblins, because they don't have time to count when they could be building things. I don't think I can quantify just how much I'm enjoying this card; instead of attempting to analyze the humor, I'm literally sitting here chuckling to myself. So let's break away and talk about the gameplay, and also talk about playing this and getting a zero-cost hasty Smuggler's Copter. Hoo boy, can you imagine something like Pioneer Eggs with this? The design is somewhat reminiscent of Heartless Summoning, actually, with a slightly different bend. The difference is actually more powerful in some ways, because you can pay the echo cost of one two-drop having drawn into another free one. Let's be real, this is for sure a rare, but it's got the drawback and upside balance that's pushed without being brokenly so. I think out of all the cards this contest, this is my favorite use of an idiom in itself.

@reaperfromtheabyss — Streamside Picknicker

Well, it's cute. Very cute. Pleasantly cute! I think that the flavor text is groanworthy but it can't be groaned without a grin there. It's resembling some of the Bloomburrow shenaniganery, and the enters trigger is certainly a curious case of whether or not it'll fit the archetype well. Sometimes they'll say that it's in one, and it turns out to be not viable, yadda yadda, but here, well, I like the fact that the mechanics tell a story. The frog comes to a stream for a picnic, and, seeing the stream is nice, feels invigorated by its tranquility. And if it's not quite the best vista, it notifies a companion that they should keep moving on. Isn't that just dandy?

Moreover, the mechanics are curious in the best way. Utility lands can perhaps make the untap ability relevant in the late game, but there's always the chance you just want to untap one of your creatures as a blocker post-combat. If you have a more aggressive start, then you untap a land and play another one-drop on turn 2, and you're in business for sure, assuming you don't already have an on-curve play. There are more complex options hidden in this card for limited, and as a common I believe there would be a nice niche for it. Whimsy isn't going to move any mountains, but perhaps it'll untap an Island or a fellow frog. And that's just plain pleasant to me.

@yourrightfulking — Nothing Personal

I'm teleporting behind you as we speak to say: I really frickin' like this card. You can stab your opponents, backstab yourself, and when you're done doing those things you're better off either way! I'm a huge fan of this mechanical versatility. Removal is great, but you can turn a weak blocker into two kickass blockers, or if you're getting ahead you can make your attacks even better and spread out the board. It's a nasty little rare that I would love to play in limited; it's almost reminiscent of that little Dimir cantrippy thing from MKM, the terrible bulk rare that was actually awesome if you got the morbid trigger thingy.

And you really made this flavor text work, in my opinion. It turns the original bird quote from "current resources are just as valuable as potential futures" into "betrayal is as betrayal does," in a sense. That just sends tingles down my easily penetratable spinal column! It's like the very concept of assassination is both speaking the card's name to your opponent and/or your own creatures, and the flavor text is inviting you regardless to look at the life you've chosen and say "Yes, yes absolutely it is worth it. Now lemme swing in." You go, you funky little mercenary. Godspeed, shadows willing.

Running are just around the bend. @abelzumi

[unwelcome-ozian]

hi, it's the O9A anon again. thank you so much for your reply! i'm glad you're feeling more healthy. i had a question about the tree of wyrd - we have areas of the inner world named after planets like saturn and venus, which i think fits with the tree model? our system has female ritual parts that were trained to be rounwytha and they have a special forest in the inner world where they operate, controlling animal/epsilon parts. they often talk about a ritual in which 33 points are painted on the body, and they talk about a being called 'mikholeh'. do you know anything about what this ritual could mean/be for, and how i may be able to access the different areas named after planets? (i'm assuming there's a way to travel between them but i'm not sure how). thank you so much! sorry for the complicated questions, i understand if you can't answer them :)

we have areas of the inner world named after planets like saturn and venus, which i think fits with the tree model?

Yes, they are. The Tree of Wyrd has seven celestial bodies: the Moon, Venus, Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Rounwytha Way: Is one of the three O9A praxises. It is also known as 'the rouning'. “The way of the Rounwytha is the way of the independent, strong, empath: of those who have developed their natural, their latent, their empathic and muliebral, abilities, qualities, and skills, both exoteric and esoteric [1].

Given the nature of these abilities, qualities, and skills, the overwhelming majority of individuals who follow the Way of the Rounwytha are women – who thus embody our sinister feminine archetype..”

“There are only three rites of this tradition: one celebratory [2], and two to train, to breed, the Rounwytha. The training is and was simple, and involves the candidate in living, for two whole alchemical seasons [3], alone in an isolated area, as per what is now known as the Rite of Internal Adept, followed – some unfixed causal Time later (sometimes a year later, sometimes longer) – by undertaking the Camlad Rite of The Abyss, and which Rite lasted for a whole lunar month [4]. another, in order to train candidates in certain necessary Martial skills, with this training lasting from six months to (more usually) a year. [5]” --Order of Nine Angles 123 yfayen

33 points are painted on the body, 

The number 33 is an occult/magick number and can have many meanings. Number 33 is a Master Number. The number 33 reflects the interface of the familiar world with the higher spiritual realm.

There are 33 vertebrae. The Kundalini goes up all 33 vertebrae of the spine and one achieves apotheosis.

It would depend on where on the body the points are painted.

and they talk about a being called 'mikholeh’. I’ve looked at the materials/information I have and am unable to find anything with the name ‘mikholeh’.  

However O9A says: What also has to be considered is that the ONA uses certain words in an esoteric way – with a specialized Occult meaning – so that words such as archetype and nexion and psyche have specific esoteric meanings [1] over and above, or instead of, their accepted common exoteric usage. Thus, and for example, a word such as Satanas may have an esoteric (batin) meaning and an exoteric (dhir) meaning – with the dhir meaning referring to what mundanes understand as Satan (a particular male causal and demonic form), and the batin meaning referring to what ONA initiates understand as an acausal (non-temporal, non-causally defined) entity Satanas who/which can shapeshift and who/which exists (when in the acausal) outside of our limited (causal) categories such as male/female, singular/plurality, and past/present/future. Hence, the accepted exoteric understanding of, and/or the appearance of some-thing – such as a name or chant – is not necessarily a guide to or an indication of its esoteric meaning, its use, or its efficacy in terms of sorcery. [2]” 

E.g. Malkuth, Vindex

how i may be able to access the different areas named after planets? 

Here are a few of the ways:

Some systems have star gates to reach other areas. 

Through symbols such as the Algol symbol.

The seven spheres and the pathways.

Oz

[victo1re]

i'm having a bit of a think about the secondary theme i've touched on some for vic before - the dichotomy of Society tm and the wild, nurture and nature, learned behaviour and core instinct. i've described (pre-canon) her in the past as walking doctrine; personhood is a luxury she has willingly given up in exchange for meaning. she has spent three centuries learning to be the perfect extension of bhaal. as his blade, she is forever cemented into the canon of toril as something important. she has very willingly steeped herself in the twin systems of religion and politics (and the secret third of academia, which is, to her, sort of both), devouring their structure and achieving what she views as the ultimate height of each. she has shaped herself according to the society she inhabits in three of the most archetypical possible ways. she wears it with utmost pride - this ability to insinuate herself into the upper echelon and make a home there, to play the game, to understand the rules so deeply that she is winning before most others can begin to see the board. the mask has fused to her face; she is nothing absent her titles, absent archmage and duchess and priestess. she has constructed her life that way intentionally. it is service. it is worship. when she is stripped of that, all of it, she almost immediately becomes something entirely else - someone else, because victoria without her memories is a person. she does not know that she is not supposed to be, though the urge does its very best to devour her fresh. and the person that she is... is feral when contrasted against the duchess and her renowned self-control. she is sharp-edged and angry, terrified, emotional, not to mention highly physical. she spends some time feeling as though the body she woke up in is someone else's, but she changes it to fit, and then she is more at home in it than the duchess ever was, because it is hers, then, not bhaal's. she becomes something wild in the woods west of baldur's gate, something untameable, by way of the burning desire to live. the cage she constructed to house herself falls utterly apart. specifically i'm thinking tonight about how this interacts with the slayer. bhaal has been attempting to break through to her in increasingly graphic, violent, horrific ways - puppeteering her body to do things she would never generally do, not even at the height of her devotion. they had an accord when it came to her worship and how she executed it. he's pushing her so that she'll break and in so doing, become something he recognises again. her attempt on her lover's life is the latest in that grotesque line. i do not think victoria ever took the slayer form in her past. her boons from bhaal came in other ways. her methods did not agree with that sort of overt brutality. she was in the eternal process of reinventing what it meant to be bhaal's chosen, and in the way of a god endlessly bored by pattern/cycle/repetition, he allowed her to. here, in the present, you have a victoria that has already transformed into a wild thing. she does not need to kill isobel to do that; it is currently her natural state. and yet bhaal-via-scleritas offers it to her anyway - the raw power of the slayer, which she has never before accepted or desired and still does not now, for vastly different reasons. you are ready now, he says. you are ready to receive this gift of mine, that only my most holy warriors have ever earnt, and she is meant to hate it so viscerally that it shocks her out of the fugue her memories have fallen into - but she only hates it with the ferocity of an agent of life that has been offered the tools of death.

[blueberry-lemon]

Two-Dimensional Writing

I think there’s a place for characters, and stories, that are two-dimensional. In fact, I’m willing to die on the hill that sometimes it’s just more fun (and “better writing”) to aim for two-dimensional characters if it fits what you’re going for.

Before writing this, I was curious if there was an actual agreed-upon definition of a “two-dimensional character.” When used casually I feel like we all generally understand what we’re talking about, but I figured before I ran my mouth I should at least check if there was a textbook definition.

Most of the results I got on Google were Reddit and Quora threads of people debating the definition, along with a couple of other like-minded bloggers trying to explain it. So I guess the term isn’t exactly scientific.

So I guess I should try to define it. I guess I would say something like this:

One-dimensional character: Only exists in the world or story to serve a single purpose

Two-dimensional character: A character lacking realistic depth. Lacks complex thoughts, feelings, history, and may not behave like a “real person” would.

Three-dimensional character: A character whose thoughts, feelings, and history feel believable and “realistic”

I think most times that people refer to a story as having one-dimensional or two-dimensional characters, it’s meant as a dunk. But I don’t think it has to be a dunk!

Two-dimensions lets you play in the world of archetypes and expectations. When I think of two-dimensional writing, I think of games like Fire Emblem and Chrono Trigger, where you totally “get” a character’s vibe as soon as they join the party. I think of shows like K-On and One Piece, where you’re invited into the running gags by quickly understanding what a character would do in any scenario.

I don’t think playing in this space needs to be thought as synonymous with “bad” or “lazy” writing. If I’m being honest, I’m pretty sure it’s usually an intentional choice. It’s fun to play in a well-established genre, or toss around some well-worn character tropes, as long as you’re doing it well. Sometimes you’re dealing with a story or game that has a huge amount of characters, and it’s important to write them in such a way that people can recognize them, learn their personality and backstory, and remember them as soon as possible.

On the audience side, sometimes it’s fun and convenient to start something and immediately jump up like “oh, THAT’S gonna be my favorite character!” and then see if your prediction pans out. It can be fun to have a favorite type, or an archetype you like to see, and find out how a new writer puts their own personal twist on it. Or sometimes the depth and the fun of the story is how they take the toolbox of two-dimensional characters you know by heart and arrange them in different combinations with each other. Or place them in unexpected scenarios, where we can finally see how Character B, Character E, and Character H are all going to interact and get themselves out of a challenging situation.

And lastly…sometimes I think a work isn’t quite built for having three-dimensional characters. Either it doesn’t actually have the proper amount of time to explore a person’s full depth, or it clashes with the tone of what it’s doing. It can also, if you’re not careful, make your realistic-seeming characters all become a bit bland and unmemorable, because they don’t have any notable trait to latch onto. Maybe your intention was “this is gonna be a fully three-dimensional, believable person” but all you ended up with in execution was “this is a boring, relatable, average Joe.”

(Obviously, if you CAN pull off a realistically believable cast of characters and have the time to flesh them out…more power to you, I love that too.)

I think it’s also important to remember that the genre-archetype, two-dimensional style writing is not exclusive to any particular genre, mood, or emotion. Heart wrenching dramas can play in tropey two-dimensional spaces, just like comedies can. And maybe the secret sauce to your two-dimensional writing is how you set something up to have one tone and then hop to another tone for a moment of surprise.

So honestly, give me the two-dimensional archetypes. Give me the RPG characters who have like 2 notable traits and 3 emotional states. As long as you execute it well, add in a few surprises, don’t make real-life stereotypes, and have fun with it…I don’t think there’s anything wrong with playing in that space. It works for a reason!

[janiedean]

25th hour and city of thieves I never read the book so why did you compare them to jaime jon and ygritte

eeeeh it's been years since I dealt with either and god why do I even have to admit benioff can write when he wants to but anyway

25th hour has nothing to do with asoiaf it's just a really good script and it turned into a really good movie

the thing with city of thieves is... okay tldr the basic plot is two russian men (lev and kolya) are taken prisoner during the leningrad siege and are promised freedom if they manage to find eggs to bake a birthday cake for the daughter of the guy who arrested them (obv hard to find during a siege where everyone was dying of hunger), they go around trying to find the eggs, at some point they go out of town in this mansion where they supposedly had a bunch of chickens and it turns out that the mansion is full of girls who were kept there as nazi prisoners for you can imagine which reasons, they team up with the local partisans to save them, the partisans include a young girl named vika who is v good at warfare and eventually falls in love with lev, blah blah blah not spoiling things but at the end they have to separate then *she* finds him post-war bringing eggs, he tells her they can make an omelette and she replies she can't cook, that was your basic plot thing is, lev is a 17yo bucket of walking angst who has Issues because his father was arrested and deported by the government because he was too much of a free thinker for them and jewish, bad combination when it comes to stalin government (as far as I recall), doesn't really want to admit that he might be dead-dead at least in the beginning, doesn't talk too much and isn't too social, also being jewish he already felt singled out and like he had to mix/blend/be better than his father or smth like that kolya was taken prisoner for being a deserter, doesn't appreciate authority all that much, cracks bad jokes all the time and irritates lev bc he doesn't take shit seriously except when he gets serious when it comes to saving the girls used as unwilling prostitutes, if I don't recall wrong he was extremely attractive/charming vika basically was going guerrilla stuff, was a better shot than them, went at lev every other moment like I know way mroe than you about stuff (which she did btw), was the one pursuing him more actively and I don't remember if she was a redhead or not but like... the personality fit the bill now like idk if it was obvious from my bad summary and ofc there were differences (like for one kolya had a nice active sex life with a bunch of female friends instead of yknow toxic rship with his twin) but when it comes to character archetypes/personalities lev and jon were pretty much the same deal from the teenage angst to the daddy issues to needing to keep the family name honorable, jaime and kolya had a good 70% of basic traits in common and vika and ygritte were the exact same type including the romance where they make the first move and not being stereotypical feminine which is why idg why the fuck benioff managed to write a book with three main chars that are the exact same archetypes as jon jaime and ygritte with the obvious differences and then completely fucking up adapting jon/jaime in the series because if he could write city of thieves there is absolutely no way he actually misread the og characters nor didn't realize what they were there for so...................... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk and I guess I never will but if I wrote an asoiaf au of city of thieves with that recast no one would bat an eyelid, I compared them because they're the same tropes obv written different and in another context but it was so glaringly obvious I'm still asking myself wtf went wrong there almost ten years later

anyway as much as it pains me to say city of thieves was actually a pretty good book so like idk if anyone feels like obtaining it through whichever mean they find most ethical when it comes to maybe or not financing benioff it's not a waste of your time

[annonniiiiieeeee]

hey, would it be ok/possible to give writing tips cus i recently started a fanfic and i want it to be as good as yours. Any suggestions?

I am super flatter. I’m I also have no clue what to say.

Guess some basics.

Keep your words varied.

Instead of “he said” “she said”

Try “he asked” “she responded”

It helps the writing run smoothly and also gives you more characterization as you can describe both the mood of conversation and the attitude of characters

Apply this overall. Not just for conversations but fight scenes and movement as well.

Merriam-webster site is great for this. Put it on thesaurus mode and it will give you a bunch of synonyms. They also help with characterization as well.

Words have power and the ones you pick are important. Some words carry different emotions with them. If you want to describe some one as caring you can used the words compassionate or the word benevolent. While both mean caring they symbolize a difference in character. (Again the thesaurus is super helpful for this.

Next conversation

Read back through your conversations. Not the actions or movement but just the quotations. See if the conversation actually flows.

Add movement to the conversation. What are the characters doing while they talk. Are the pacing are hug what is it.

Fight sequences.

These are hard to write. Know that going in. It’s okay to struggle here.

I use YouTube a lot here. There are experts there that break down fighting moves in video games, movies, shows ext. use it.

I watch one three second clip over and over until I write down the movements of the body, weapon, whatever it is.

Research.

This is really important. If you are using something that isn’t from your personal background research.

We have a vibrant community here and people love to share.

I have made plenty of mistakes. But people have been kind enough to point them out and help me fix them. I don’t know Spanish and I accidentally misspelled several words and many people reach out and helped me fix them.

Be open to positive feedback. There are a tone of creative minds here. I encourage people to theorize in my comments and then if I see a really good idea I will sometimes work it into the plot.

Set your characters

I knew my ending from the beginning. This allowed me to know where I wanted my characters to be at the end and create plot points that got them there.

Set some character traits and stick to them.

When in doubt go back to the original material. Donnie has a unique way of speaking he replaces common words with scientific all the time ie phalange sandwich instead of knuckle sandwich. Use that characterization to your advantage.

The video below is a great example of how to write a character and set their character traits. Yes it’s specifically about the scooby dip gang but you can take the criticism given and apply it to all modern media. It breaks down the characters to their core and describes what makes a good character of that archetype and how they fit together as a team. There’s also a good couple segment when he talks about Fred and Daphne. (This came out before Velma and it defiantly highlights how those writes fail without even trying)

Really great resource if you want to write a group together

Conflict

It’s okay to have simple conflicts or more then one. And it is okay to make a character grow. No character should be perfect.

Usagi had a mini arch. He is a protective person. When Leo was healing he was protecting him and saw him as someone who needed protection. He had a whole little fantasy about how they could live at the Tenshu with Leo’s family. I remember people being a little upset with him because he didn’t understand that Leo was a warrior to. But that was the point. He didn’t know. As soon as he did he could grow and change as well.

It’s okay to have little conflicts like that. But be carful how you handle miscommunication conflicts. If the problem can be solved by the characters sitting down and talking it probably shouldn’t be the main conflict. They are great for side conflicts but can be frustrating if it’s the main conflict of a long fic (short fics are fine)

Remember this is for fun. At the end of the day your here because you enjoy it. This is a creative outlet for people who enjoy creating. Don’t lose sight of that in the pursuit of perfection.

If I think of anything else I will add it here.

[zahri-melitor]

Recent DC Reads:

Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale

This is another book from the DC Ink teen graphic novels line and it’s a bit of a headscratcher for me. I don’t mind that the line leans heavily into reinterpretations of a general three sentence outline of a character’s past (there’s been some great work done here, and Oracle Code is probably the top of the list for ‘wide reinterpretation update that works’), but on some occasions when you know a lot about a character it can be to your detriment, just in terms of characterisation.

Art and design wise, this felt particularly like a webcomic in collected form, more than a graphic novel in and of itself. It was very episodic and chunked in a way that my brain could separate it into each webcomic post, complete with titles for each post. Also in terms of its episodic nature was that the plot tended to wander: the writing would pick up a storyline and get distracted by the new shiny, forgetting the previous plot thread. However, I did enjoy that the story ended on an open question over whether Rosie had made the right decision or not for herself.

It hit enough of the basic beats of a young Selina Kyle to be recognisable as Selina, but it was definitely one of the more divergent stories in this line in that the elements really didn’t line up with any of the origin stories I’m familiar with for her. I also found the inclusion of Bruce rather gratuitous and unnecessary.

I think the point where it had difficulty the most is that a lot of the beats of a good Catwoman tale (the love of cats, the fitting in to high society to act as a thief, the heists, the flirting, the athleticism) were all present but fragmented. They were largely dealt with separately and didn’t really pull together into a coherent whole. Which, this Selina is 14! She’s not fully competent yet. That’s fine. But it was a bit too early edition without acknowledging that in future all these elements will combine together into one seamless act.

I generally like the DC Ink line, they’re nicely accessible introductions to characters, particularly leaning into what is mythologically true about the character’s archetype more than any sort of canon-faithfulness. But this one just didn’t quite pull itself together in a satisfying way for me.

The Sandman Universe #1 and Books of Magic #1-6 (2019) I picked this up entirely on the promise of Bilquis Evely art, so I got…half an issue of that? It was beautiful, in any case.

Every time I try to read one of the continuing Books of Magic series, rather than the original mini, I’m reminded that a lot of what I love most about the mini is its contained, complete nature. It’s very much a story with the attitude that underlies the creation of the Vertigo line, but it’s also a really good realistic-edged sampler of the various corners of Magical and Dark DC. You can pick it up and get a taste for a lot of different characters/magical realms in DC and it works as a sort of directory to go find new things to try.

While the continuing stories focusing on Tim Hunter? They’re okay. They’re not Giovanni Zatara holding an eviscerated rabbit, or soaring Charles Vess art of magical realms.

Those complaints aside, this was well set up for a new run. I didn’t need to be fully across all the events of previous runs; it would be a slog to come into this if you were completely unfamiliar with the basics of the Endless, Dream’s realm, and who Tim Hunter is, but it was entirely accessible for someone who has only read the original Books of Magic and enough of Sandman to know what it looks like (though there are definite spoilers for both the end of Sandman and events during previous Books of Magic runs).

I’m not going to continue this, but I do have to say one of the reasons I regularly dip into the extended Sandman Universe is that it gets some of the best DC artists in the business at decorative and creative art assigned to it. At this point I go here for artists like Charles Vess, J.H. Williams III and Bilquis Evely being allowed to go rogue and as hard as they want with their art, and being supported in that.

[nulfaga]

can't stop thinking abt codirectors ashley and thane they've moved into my mind. i don't even think they like each other outside of the theatre but as soon as they pass the threshold of the rehearsal space it's mom and dad to the duckling actors. their ethos is completely different also... thane wants a looooong rehearsal period. in theory he's fine if this play never goes on at all, it's about the journey etc. Ashley on the other hand has 0.00 tolerance for what she considers woo-woo bullshit like NO you don't have to stand on one leg for three hours NO you don't have to inhabit the physicality of a fried egg just learn your fucking lines and say them at the right time please. she keeps a running countdown to opening night on like a big obnoxious holo in the studio.

i also feel like thane would have a ball of a time reading up on various theater practices. neither he nor ashley are very impressed by the dadaists who advocate vomiting on stage or blasting earsplitting music until the audience decides to leave, and he's not a fan of chekhov purely because it's not practical for him. if you ask a drell to comb his memories (to find a commonality with the character) he's just going to live in his head for two hours and get nothing done. if anything i think he'd get a kick out of like, ohno & butoh practice and east asian traditions in general, mask work & make up & movements all according to prescribed guidelines, character archetypes etc. commedia dell'arte too but to a lesser extent. representative theater that makes no attempt to convey reality 1:1 but focuses instead on executing the given repertoire, the movements faithfully & consistently.

meanwhile ashley just wants to do depressing naturalistic plays (she actually quite likes chekhov) where people sit in their living rooms for 2 hours. or, failing that, shakespeare. i think she has a fantastic knack for directing comedies as well as tragedies, she can tell exactly when to pause for dramatic impact and when the audience is likely to laugh (although she is that asshole who shouts from the rooftops that Titus is the bard's best play)

i think they meet in the middle and do either a greek play (great text; human core; also an ensemble chorus w/ plenty of opportunity for mask/movement work) or...a postmodern symbolic play à la sarah ruhl or anne carson (for the same reason; a recognizable emotional core but lots of absurd elements that require creative staging/choreography)

i also really like to imagine ashley as the exhausted script supervisor with her hair in a bun that holds 2 highlighters and 3 ballpoints at any given time...she probably wouldn't use a paper script but the visual is dear to me. thane definitely wears the full modern dance instructor fit though, black turtleneck, sweatpants & bare feet. this is a fact

[sequoiareachesforthesky]

Today I wanted to talk about family structures and how diverse they can be and then it derailed into talks about education. Like the woke public schools that conservatives are so afraid of, that kind of things. Enjoy!

Warning : rambling. A lot of it.

Thank Satan I grew up surrounded by somewhat diverse family structures that didn't all fit the "straight married couple with 2.5 children" archetype, because being taught that this is the one and only way to live a happy life sounds scary to me.

My aunt divorced in her late 30s and is currently living her best life with her new boyfriend. And nobody makes a fuss about it, like good for her and her ex-husband if they needed to end their relationship. Divorce is healthy.

I have three uncles, none of them ever got married. I don't know much about my mom's brothers but my other uncle has been single for as long as I can remember and is absolutely thriving. He spends time with his friends, and puts time into his passions (mainly old cars). And never has anyone in my family said anything about him being single. Or even suggested that it should be something to be talked about. Because guess what, it's not a fucking problem and people aren't defined by their relationship status.

My mom went to a lesbian wedding when I was around 8 (I remember being very disappointed that I couldn't come with her because I've never been to a wedding before and it sounded like a lot fun). She made sure to show me and my siblings pictures and videos of the event. To make sure we understand that there's no problem with a family composed of two moms and a daughter (she was from one of the brides' previous marriage, again with divorce being treated a totally normal part of life, because it is).

I also grew up in a place where multicultural and mixed families were basically the norm I feel? At least that's how I was seeing it. The fact that my classmates had parents from overseas, or ethnically marked features wasn't a big deal (that's also why I'm now still very bad at recognising said "ethnic features" or foreign accents, or even knowing where names are from, because I didn't see any of those things as a difference honestly. Like how do people go "ah yes, this person is definitely from Eastern Europe". Like what??? How???). Anyway, that may be why for a while, I really struggled to understand why racism existed as a child. Like I knew it existed, I was told it was bad but I didn't understand why it was a thing in the first place (but isn't the case for most children? We're just here to enjoying the slides in the playground, we have no idea about the colonial heritage of our societies)

(sidenote: I may be mixed myself (wasian) but the history and current societal impact of racism is definitely not a topic I would say I'm very knowledgeable about. And of course looking back on it I did hold racist beliefs as a kid and there were instances when I witnessed structural racism. It just took me a while to realise it and to try to become a better person. My point here is about family structures and how I personally was exposed to a lot of mixed families, including my own, and that in that sense, race and culture have never been something I could have worried about when thinking about the idea of "founding a family". Like whatever happens happens you know)

And that's not even going into all of the friends I had who were raised by only one parent, the ones who would spend one week at their mom's then one week at their dad's, the ones who got nieces/nephews because they had much older siblings (sometimes step siblings), the ones who were adopted, and so on and so forth. So yeah, to me, it's normal for families to come in all shapes and forms. That's why nowadays, when I get introduced to new views of family and relationships, it doesn't really take me long to get it.

Sometimes I think back on my childhood and realise that I got actually pretty lucky to be in contact with many kinds of family structures, with none presented as more correct or desirable. Because now that I'm older and that I've met people who are very cautious about sticking to traditions (*cough* catholic bourgeois *cough*) and who even get anxious at the idea that they won't be able to get their straight wedding with three children that they shall raise in a pavillion in the suburbs, I really think that damn, it must suck to be them.

Anyway, judging others for having a view of "family" differing from your own is cringe, and I really think we should queer the world a bit more because why were my 12 year-old classmates so surprised when I told them that polyamory is fine to me (and even a logical way to look at love and relationships in my brain), that I didn't wanna have children later, and that I didn't if I would get a husband or a wife later, or if I would get married at all. I remember the shock in their eyes and being very confused as to why, because I was like "uuuuh, I thought homophobia didn't exist anymore? And that people should live the way they want?" (Also I've recently been diagnosed with ASD after being in denial about it my whole life so that may explain some things, since you know, the intersection between autistic and queer identities isn't even an intersection anymore).

This post was originally about family but since it intersects a lot with queerness, I just wanted to share a thought. Sometimes, I wonder if I could basically be considered as "assigned enby at birth" with how I was taught that gender doesn't matter and encouraged to be whomever I want to be without following gender norms. (This last paragraph is to be taken more as a joke than anything, but like honestly, that's why I never personally found the need to identify with the term "trans" or "non-binary". Because I just don't care personally, thanks to my upbringing. And that's why I'll always advocate for children to be exposed to queer content because me, my siblings, and probably most children from my community were and it makes for such healthier adults istg. Like yeah, I didn't care about my gender identity or whatever but the second I was put in an all girls school, I understood that it very much mattered to other people and that made me so furious, I totally get why so many people are attached to their queer identity. Because when you're in a fucking horrid environment, of course you're gonna have a strong emotional reaction to this stuff.)

All of this to say : I was raised by a woke family, went to a woke school that taught us that climate change is going to kill us all, that we should welcome all refugees, that beauty is found in difference and diversity, that disabled people should be accommodated (there was a class in my school for specially made for children with mental or learning disabilities because yes, they do have a right to education too actually), that children in general have rights and are not just objects, that solidarity is important (we made cakes for the local food bank when we were in kindergarten it was very cool. and many many fund-raising campaigns for people in need. we would mainly provide food and sanitary products, and the goal was to make a wall in the school hall with all of the collected products. it was great). We would sing songs about international solidarity and fighting against racism and water access inequalities at the school choir (looking back on it this feels a bit surreal to be frank). I was raised in the exact environment conservatives are freaking about. Heck the street where I lived was named after a communist song 😭. And you know what's the funniest thing about all that? It wasn't even that "woke". The way we were taught about societal stuff was a nice effort, but a bit clunky at times. There were still a lot, and I mean a lot of ableism against the students from the "special needs" class I talked about previously. I still got called a racist slur by a classmate when I was five. I still had so much stuff to unlearn as I got into teenage then adulthood.

What many would consider "woke" in the way I was brought up is, to me, the bare minimum. And that's why it hit me in the face like a baseball bat when I went from this great, though imperfect public school to a private middle school where boys and girls were separated in different classes. Where the students weren't mobilised to collect food for people in need in their local community but rather to pray for them and maybe give a little money to support missionary trips to Africa and things of the sorts. Where the school choir was mostly for learning Christian songs about thanking God for his eternal generosity. I was atheist btw, and attending religion class and masses were mandatory which felt a bit like infringing upon my freedom of religion but whatever I guess!! "Your parents chose to put you here so you don't have a say in the matter." a teacher once said.

So now, let me ask you a question and answer it immediately? Which of those two education systems is better? THE PUBLIC ONE OBVIOUSLY. I LOVED SCHOOL. I LOVED PEOPLE. I LOVE LIVING IN AN OPEN-MINDED COMMUNITY. AND THIS FUCKING PRIVATE CATHOLIC SCHOOL, WHICH ISN'T EVEN THE WORST OF ITS KIND BTW, ALMOST MADE ME FORGET ABOUT THIS LOVE. IT BROKE ME MENTALLY. IT COULD'VE TURNED ME INTO A PERSON I WOULD'VE HATED. AND FOR THAT I CAN NEVER FORGIVE IT. There might have been good individuals in this school, friends I made, teachers who were genuinely great people. But this school system wasn't made to help us grow into good people. You've heard it all before, how it just turns us into good employees how will preserve the system as it is, maintain the status quo.

When people tell me that education is better in private than in public school, it makes me laugh. I was always top of my class in this so called top-notch private school. Even though I was the public school kid. And even then, I would have been fucking humbled by students who spent their entire school years in the public system. Because those private school don't make you smarter, they won't help you get better grades. Even if they did, what good does it do? It's not about the grades. It's about being a person that finds their own path, their own way to live in society. Not necessarily this society, they can build their own. But how are we supposed to rely on each others and find community when we've been taught to always see the other as competition?

I wanted to talk about family structures and how diverse they can be, but I realize now that what I really I wanted to talk about is family as in finding each others, living together, embracing diversity and loving. In your own way, because there are so many different ways of loving, and so many people and things to love. But it's always love. It's caring. And this care for the people and the things about me, I got it from my education.

It's always about education.